The details make this seem less of an autonomous driving issue and more of an incredibly irresponsible operation issue.
If you give dumb toys to people, they will use it in dumb ways. This is why Waymo/Google abandoned their driver assistance efforts a decade ago and jumped straight to driverless. That turned out to be a masterstroke in terms of safety.
But otherwise, yes, your statement otherwise about giving "toys" to "dumb" people stands no matter the technology.
And knives can be used to cut steak or stab people.
Your point is that these systems need to be save even in the face of incapable drivers and that, despite the misleading marketing, they are not that ( yet ).
The other point though is that people already have access to cars and, according to the evidence, cars with these features are LESS dangerous.
Encouraging over-reliance is a problem but not as big a problem as having to rely on the human 100% of the time. This statement is just a fact given the statistics.
Given the above, while it is too extreme to say that operation by an impaired driver is “moot”, it is fair to suggest that the most significant source of risk is the impaired driver themselves and their decision to operate a vehicle of any kind. The biggest offer to this risk are the additional safety features of the vehicle. The degree of over-confidence caused by the vehicle type is a distraction.
If you're developing an autonomous system, you have a moral and ethical obligation not to roll it out when it's half baked and unsafe. You can't give an unfinished safety critical system to the general public and then blaming them for misusing it.
I guess maybe though something being less dangerous isn't the same as something being relatively more safe?
Comparing similar accidents regardless of FSD or not - a Tesla's occupants are arguably kept safer, would fair better than being in any other vehicle, right?
We’re talking about cause of the accident here, not what happens after one.
I don’t think we can say anything of the sort for Tesla FSD (beta).
How about attention-distraction monitoring, and perhaps first penalty or safeguard is forced reduced speed, where attention-distraction level determined determines the maximum speed the vehicle can go - whereby reducing the need for as fast of a reaction time?
Any other possible solutions?
I think in general coddling people is more harmful than good, and is lazy to not find nuanced solutions - just because blanket rules are "easier."
It's not for the larger discussion about safety of these sorts of systems. Any such system _has_ to consider the dumb human that's in the loop, because to not do so is almost inevitable to lead to problems. If your driving assist system makes people more likely, and more able, to drive drunk, then it's not just a problem with those people. Sure, they shouldn't be doing that, but ignoring that some people will is irresponsible.
Any system that involves humans that doesn't consider the human element is doomed to fail eventually. We humans are far too good at making that a certainty.
But all this thread is great evidence towards requiring people of a certain ineptitude to be required to only use self-driving vehicles in the future, once they're proven ~100% safe, right?
But really what you're arguing is people needing to be raised to be responsible, as the root cause-problem.
The pernicious combination that makes L2 unsafe is that it encourages the driver to let their focus wander, and then unexpectedly demands that you have full attention. When 95% of your highway time requires almost no focus, your brain will naturally wander off and pay much less attention to the situation on the road. So when the 1-in-1000 dangerous situation occurs, you're less prepared to react to it than an unassisted driver would be.
Edit to be more clear: A reaction-speed test measures your best-case reaction time, because you know it's coming. Normal driving situations test your "normal" reaction time. Situations under L2 test your worse-than-normal reaction time.
This is a large issue that will take more than action against any individual manufacturer to solve.
Even ignoring the fact that Tesla habitually lies and acts in bad faith to consumers and investors alike, the “statistics” their marketing department publishes are worthless. They present no analysis, methodology, or even data to support it. It is literally just a conclusion. The level of scientific rigor they demonstrate is unfit to even grace the hallowed halls of a grade school science fair.
Even ignoring that, this is not the first significant incident. By Tesla’s own admission there were already ~30 known incidents a year ago at the beginning of 2023. Unfortunately, I can not tell you which ones specifically because they, you guessed it, demanded NHTSA redact which system was active from their public disclosures.
Even ignoring that, their reports are suspect in the first place. Of the over 1,000 crashes they admit to being involved in they did not report the injury severity in ~95% of cases. Of the ~5% of cases where they do report the injury severity a third party (news, official complaint, etc.) published that information which compels Tesla to report the same information under penalty of law.
Of the tens of confirmed fatalities, Tesla only discovered a single one on their own (as of 2023-09). Their telemetry systems, which are responsible for detecting 90+% of their reported incidents detected fewer than 40% of their reported fatal crashes. A full 30% of known fatalities were undetected by both telemetry and media and are only recorded due to customer complaints by surviving parties who knew the system was engaged. The amount of missing data is almost certainly staggering.
So no, the data does not bear it out since there is no credible positive safety data. And, as we all know, in a safety critical system we must assume the worst or people die. No data, no go.
I'm curious where the data is about their telemetry systems' failure to detect incidents. It seems very fishy.
Come on, link your stuff. I mean, what's the source for telemetry detecting different fractions of fatal vs. non-fatal crashes? Are you sure that's not just confounded data (fatal crashes are more likely to involve damage to the computers and radio!) or outliers (there are very few fatal crashes known!)?
Basically, the red yarn on your bulletin board looks crazy thick to me. But I'd genuinely love a shot at debunking it.
But thanks for boldly calling me a conspiracy theorist when I quote data from official Tesla reports to the government.
As to your other questions, go ask Tesla. It is not my job to speculate for Tesla’s benefit when Tesla has all the data and chooses to act in bad faith by not only refusing to disclose it, but even forcing NHTSA to suppress unfavorable information.
As to “debunking” anything I am saying, whatever. It is not my job to thoroughly analyze Tesla systems from the outside to prove they are unnecessarily dangerous. It is Tesla’s burden to present robust data and analysis to third party auditors to demonstrate they are safe.
Debunking what I am saying does not somehow magically prove Tesla’s systems safe. It just means I, a random person on the internet, could not prove they were definitely unsafe. I probably also can not find the flaw in a random perpetual motion machine someone presents on the internet, but that does not make it work. Though if you are convinced by Tesla’s brand of bad faith safety analysis, then I have a perpetual motion machine powered on dreams to sell you since you can not prove it does not work.
[1] https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/ffdd/sgo-2021-01/SGO-2021-01_In...
> Debunking what I am saying does not somehow magically prove Tesla’s systems safe.
No, but it's still a blow for good faith argument and worth pursuing.
You have presented exactly zero analysis or data supporting your claim that machines that have demonstrably killed people are in actuality safe. The burden of proof is on you to present evidence, not me.
In fact, I have even presented you a new data source filled with official data that you apparently have never seen before that can bolster your point. So how about you engage in good faith argument and support your positive claims of Tesla safety instead of demanding I prove the negative?
Note that quoting unaudited statements by the Tesla marketing department are not support by the same token that official statement by VW about their emissions or Philip Morris about the safety of cigarettes are invalid. You should also not point to haphazard “analysis” derived from those statements.
Also try not to argue there is a absence of evidence that the systems are unsafe. That is only applicable before somebody dies. A death is sufficient evidence to meet the burden of proof that a system is unsafe. The burden of proof then shifts to demonstrate that the rate of death is acceptable. If there is a absence of evidence to demonstrate the rate of death is acceptable, then we must conclude, based on the burden of proof already established, that the system is unsafe.
That is your real burden here. Demonstrating the available data is sufficiently unbiased, robust, and comprehensive to support your claim. Good luck, you’ll need it.
Here's what I found in my quick analysis after filtering all Tesla crashes:
Total Tesla crashes: 1048
Crashes with 'unknown' injury severity: 997
Percentage of crashes with 'unknown' injury severity: 95.13%
Total number of reported 'fatal' crashes: 27
Number of fatal crashes detected by telemetry: 11
Percentage of fatal crashes detected by telemetry: 40.74%
Number of fatal crashes reported only by 'complaint/claim' source: 7
Percentage of fatal crashes with only 'complaint/claim' as source: 25.92%
My experience is that when people repeatedly ask for analysis in the face of raw data being presented, it's because they're afraid to find out what's in it and hope to sweep it under the rug.
Number of fatal crashes detected by telemetry: 11
Number of fatal crashes reported only by 'complaint/claim' source: 7
Yeah, I declare this debunked. This nonsense is only a tiny bit better than trying to declare a product dangerous based on one DUI accident.
(Also, I'm pretty sure you're making the argument in the wrong direction. Wasn't the contention upthread that there were too *FEW* telemetry-reported accidents, as if to claim that Tesla was suppressing them? This seems to say that Telemetry is a more reliable reporter, no? Meh. Not even interested in the specifics anymore, there's literally nothing a data set this small is going to tell us.)
The original claim was this:
> Their telemetry systems, which are responsible for detecting 90+% of their reported incidents detected fewer than 40% of their reported fatal crashes. A full 30% of known fatalities were undetected by both telemetry and media and are only recorded due to customer complaints by surviving parties who knew the system was engaged.
So no, I'm not making the argument in the wrong direction. Perhaps try re-reading it? The numbers match it almost exactly.
I'm done with your nonsense.
“Ha, Tesla actively suppressed and concealed 95% of the evidence so you do not have enough evidence to prove them wrong. Checkmate.
Tesla just hides it because it is too vindicating. So you have no choice but to believe their unsupported and unaudited claims.”
Again, you have not presented a single claim supported by any auditable data or analysis. You demand others present conclusions with a confidence interval when even the Tesla safety team is unable to do so even though Tesla is the one pushing a system conclusively known to kill people. It is their duty to collect sufficient, comprehensive, and incontrovertible evidence that their systems do not incur excess risk and subject it to unbiased audits.
So, present your comprehensive, incontrovertible claim with a confidence interval based on audited data. That is the burden of proof to support killing more people.
That said, cars are dumb toys to give people. Certainly access to cars is dangerous for people that are going to use them while drunk. “Sense of security” or not, why were these guys in control of a vehicle?
While autonomous vehicles are not ready, this event just cements the need for them in my mind. I expect that they have already saved more lives than they have cost. Some continue to insist that replacing human drivers is a high bar. In edge cases and for the best drivers, it is. Collectively though, evidence suggests that the bar is very low and that we have already surpassed it.
At this point, it is more of a “fairness” or “control” issue who gets hurt by autonomy than it is aggregate safety by the numbers. In this case, thankfully, it sounds like it was fair.
The driver was literally a Tesla Inc. employee. Do you really think that they were fooled by marketing into believing the system was more capable than it was? No, they were just drunk and made a terrible decision.
I mean, I'm tempted to just agree. Let's call it something else. Will that stop these ridiculous arguments? I really doubt it.
> Von Ohain used Full Self-Driving nearly every time he got behind the wheel, Bass said, placing him among legions of Tesla boosters heeding Musk’s call to generate data and build the technology’s mastery. While Bass refused to use the feature herself — she said its unpredictability stressed her out — her husband was so confident in all it promised that he even used it with their baby in the car.
> “It was jerky, but we were like, that comes with the territory of” new technology, Bass said. “We knew the technology had to learn, and we were willing to be part of that.”
Seems like he was indeed fooled by marketing.
This dude: "Sounds good, let me put my baby in it. It's jerky, but I'm contributing for a bigger cause."
This counts as being misled by marketing to me.
This dude: "Neat, I'm going to use it!"
FSD, upon activation: "Full Self-Driving (Beta). Full Self-Driving is in early limited access Beta and must be used with additional caution. It may do the wrong thing at the worst time. Do not become complacent. ... Use FSD in limited Beta only if you will pay constant attention to the road, and be prepared to act immediately, specially around blind corners, crossing intersection, and in narrow driving situations. Do you want to enable FSD while it is in limited Beta?"
This dude: "Elon said it's safe, I'm going to drink and drive!"
Well, this is false. So it's misleading right off the bat.
As far as proving how unsafe it is, no one can do it unless Tesla is transparent with their data. Deliberately hiding that data doesn't automatically mean it's safer than humans, so yes, their claims are indeed highly misleading.
Look, these are the most popular vehicles on the road. Where are the wrecks? Where are the bodies? Surely if these were significant there would at least be a bunch of anecdata showing suspicious behavior. And there isn't. And you know that, which is why you're arguing so strongly here.
Just chill out. The system is safe. It is not perfect, but it is safe. And no amount of whatifery will make it otherwise.
It’s telling that you want to rely on anecdata and news reports as proof rather than asking Tesla to be forthcoming.
To call a system safe and more specifically safer than human, you need data and you don’t have it. Plain and simple. The burden of proof is on you.
So... it's like that Money Printer Go Brrr... meme. Shouting loudly about something you believe deeply doesn't make it true. Cars aren't crashing. QED.
“It’s safer than humans.”
“Proof?”
“Just look around, bro. Trust me, it’s good enough. No data needed.”
Thankfully, some of us don’t lack critical thinking.
So, yeah. Occam tells me that these cars are safe. Which matches my 2.7 years of experience watching one of these things drive me around. So I'm comfortable with that, no matter how angry that makes you. I'm absolutely willing to change my mind with evidence, but not because you yelled at me on the internet.
You claim it’s true because have anecdotes and personal experiences. You also say there are no crashes. But there are crashes. We just don’t know if FSD was engaged at the time because, again, Tesla doesn’t reveal it. Go through the NHTSA public database, there are dozens and dozens of Tesla ADAS crashes. Those are just the reported ones.
You are also conspicuously silent in this whole thread when data transparency comes up. Not once have you admitted Tesla should be more forthcoming about their crashes, and that in itself is very revealing.
You want to argue data or methodology? I’m here. But you’re being intellectually dishonest and resorting to repeating the same things over and over again. That ain’t gonna convince me.
And cut the shit about being angry or yelling at you. No one’s doing that. You’re clearly projecting.
> Go through the NHTSA public database, there are dozens and dozens of Tesla ADAS crashes. Those are just the reported ones.
Why hasn't anyone else, or you, directly published conflicting data to show that it's less safe? "debunking" some statistics might be correct but it's not convincing, and definitely won't result in any action you might want to see from regulatory bodies.
Tesla should start by first reporting disengagement data to CA DMV like every other self driving company. It shows FSD's rate of progress.
Then they should take all their crashes, normalize for different factors I mentioned earlier and then make a comparison. See how Waymo does it: https://waymo.com/blog/2023/12/waymo-significantly-outperfor.... They have multiple white papers on their methodology. Go through it, if you're interested to see what apples-to-apples comparison looks like.
> Why hasn't anyone else, or you, directly published conflicting data to show that it's less safe?
Because Tesla redacts every single reported crash to point that it's useless. Is FSD enabled or Autopilot? Not reported. FSD version? Redacted. Injury? Unknown. Description? Redacted. Good luck trying to glean any information from it. This is by design to prevent independent analysis of their performance.
Be transparent like everyone else. You know it's fishy when they're actively trying to hide things.
> You're essentially telling us that drivers driving Teslas with active autopilot (i.e. limited to great weather conditions on high quality roads) have fewer accidents than those without active autopilot (e.g. driving in poor weather conditions, or on bad roads). That's not much of an insight.
FSD refusing to engage in unsafe driving conditions does not compromise the system's safety. In fact, it's the safest possible option, and something I wish more humans (myself included) would do.
> As far as proving how unsafe it is, no one can do it unless Tesla is transparent with their data.
Right, so how are you confidently discounting Elon's claim without data?
That’s not the relevant part here. It’s that other humans do drive in unsafe conditions that contribute to overall human crash rates and those variables are not controlled for in the comparison.
You can’t just drive in areas your system deems safe, but then compare to humans who drive everywhere. You understand how that skews the comparison, right? It’s pretty basic statistics.
> Right, so how are you confidently discounting Elon's claim without data?
Elon’s claim isn’t supported by data either. That’s how I can discount it.
When you say “safer than human”, you better support it with data that holds up to scrutiny. The burden of proof is on you. Otherwise, you’re asking us to prove a negative.
That's a frightening attitude. Something I keep in mind every time I see another Tesla on the road. And I'm driving one myself.
> Before enabling Autopilot, the driver first needs to agree to “keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times” and to always “maintain control and responsibility for your vehicle.” Subsequently, every time the driver engages Autopilot, they are shown a visual reminder to “keep your hands on the wheel."
They read and accepted the warnings informing them how to use the system, and then did the opposite. They willfully and knowingly used a feature in an unsupported manner.
Sorry, this is not being misled by marketing.
What reason is that? If they're safety critical systems, why are they putting them on the road at all?
There is no real evidence (not biased or cherry picked) that replacing all drivers with Tesla's would actually be better/ I am aware of Tesla's numbers but those are invalid statistics , not comparing apples to apples. We would need something like how many miles does a car drive before a driver takes over, not comparing number of accidents since those are comparing human vs computer+human
For example: all of the worst driving conditions are inherently in the 'human drivers' bucket because the computer won't engage in those situations.
I sometimes must drive on icy roads where the computer won't engage and all - these are more dangerous conditions and by refusing to do anything they ensure the computer does work. It is possible for humans to be better than computers+humans in all situations that computers work, but because of those situations where the computers don't work end up overall worse.
The above are just two issues that I can think of, and I'm not even a researcher who would know all of those special cases. Which is why everyone wants transparent data: someone independent needs enough information to account for factors like the above and allow us to have a real debate.
I think it is not relevant for real self driving. I can "invent" also a computer that will not let drunk people start the car, it will have good statistics, the issue I am not a bilionaire to get people install my invention in their cars.
if we the society want to reduce the deaths we could have already done a lot more for preventing drunk drivers, bad drivers, speeding etc.
For example, I recently tried using the adaptive cruise control/lane centering features on a long road trip, and it was maddening, not to mention pretty terrifying. The exits from this highway weren't well marked, so at most of the exits the car tried to stay it the middle of the rightmost driving lane and the exist lane (i.e. directly into the oncoming divider). I get that other systems may be more advanced, but I don't see the benefit of an automation level that every now and then takes on the driving characteristics of a drunk toddler.
I've got radar cruise control, lane keeping, and auto braking on one of my cars.
I just drive it like it's a normal car, and the computer helps me out from time to time. That's where the value is for me. I don't do a lot of driving with cruise control, so radar assisted isn't very helpful, but lane keeping nudges me when I drive on the line, and auto brake helps out in some situations (and prevents me from backing over flowers, and some other over reactions).
For my car, lane keeping doesn't nudge too hard, so it's not hard to push through, but it helps a bit if I lose attention.
I'm considering replacing this vehicle, and I'd get these systems again. If I replace my other vehicles, which don't get to go on long drives, it wouldn't be as big of a priority.
A lot of accidents happen from a split second of lack of attention. Lane keep prevents you from inadvertently drifting over the centre line into traffic. Radar cruise control prevents you from rear ending the vehicle in front of you. Both of these simple features are awesome.
Self driving watched the road, I watched the ditches. I didn't need to avoid a moose that time, but it may have saved a coyote's life.
Here's what I mean. There are people who will drive drunk. At the margin, there are people who will not drive drunk, but who will drive drunk using FSD. But how many? How much more drunk are they willing to be?
On the other side, driving drunk with FSD is safer than doing it without. Criminally irresponsible, yes, but I think reasonable people will agree that it's somewhat safer, FSD has a better track record than drunk drivers. But how much safer?
Depending on how the margins intersect, FSD is either more dangerous or less so. I suspect the answer is less so, that is, there aren't that many people who would only drive drunk with FSD, and FSD is good enough at what it does to lead to fewer accidents. But I can't prove it, and reasonable people might come to a different conclusion. Practically speaking, it's impossible to get data which would settle this question.
We don't know that.
if the car is truly autonomous, then no, its failure of a life critical system
if the car is not autonomous, then calling it "Full Self Driving" is a wilful misrepresentation of it's capability. To a normal person (no ignore the driver's employment history) full self drive, means that, it drives it's self, safely. You and I know that's not the case. However the vast majority of people out there don't know it.
Everyone is rightly chewing Boeing out for lax safety standards, but that door didn't kill anyone. If you are going to be annoyed at Boeing, then you need to be absolutely fucked off at tesla.
But in this case, which is what the previous comment is talking about, this doesn't apply.
For example kinder eggs are illegal in the USA, because even though the small(ish) plastic parts are inside a plastic inedible case, too many kids ate the small plastic parts.
Now, the vast majority of people eating kinder eggs, don't eat the toy. However because its reasonable that an unsupervised child would eat the plastic, they were banned.
But.
The point of FSD is that it is safe. If its safe, a drunk person who is behind the wheel, shouldn't be able to cause it to crash, if the FSD is engaged. FSD should fail safe.
but it can't fail safe, it is not "full self drive" and should never have been marketed as such.
However, people's safety is supplemental to large corporation's feelings/profits/liability.
Doesn't make tesla any less culpable.
The door was only part of the issue. 346 people died in a pair of crashes:
In every single discussion with Tesla fans re: FSD, we hear that "FSD is safer NOW than human drivers", but every time there's an accident it's the driver's fault.
At what point are Tesla accountable for the mixed messaging around this product?
This feature requires acknowledging multiple documents staying that it may make errors and is not to be classified as an autonomous driving system. This is present when you purchase the feature, in the tutorial videos about what the car is capable of, in a screen you must read before enabling this feature, and repeated in every set of release notes that appear on each update.
I fail to see why all blame for impaired driving evaporates because the manufacturer of the car is Tesla.
Let's put on the Product Manager hat. How would you convey to a user that they should use a feature in a responsible manner?
but eventually when self driving cars are sufficiently advanced, they should be able to drive drunk people home without needing them to provide input (and probably best to forbid them from doing so all together as they’re impaired)
Yet, I believe that even at 0.26 blood alcohol content he had a better chance at living if driving himself.
It’s not nothing but it’s not a lot either.
https://www.healthline.com/health/alcohol/blood-alcohol-leve...
- 0.26 is around "blackout drunk" (I am not sure I have ever drank this much)
- 0.20 is when I know that I have made a terrible mistake, definitely "wasted" as we say (though I haven't drank like this for many *many* years).
- I begin to feel dizzy and ill at around 0.15ish...
- 0.1 is a drunk feeling.
- 0.8 is the legal driving limit in most US states.
And here are some other sources for you:
https://www.utoledo.edu/studentaffairs/counseling/selfhelp/s...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_alcohol_content
Also, one thing to note about these charts, they are pretty conservative. One drink is rarely 0.02 unless you rarely drink, and had this one drink on an empty stomach, or are a very small person. Or maybe if you take a shot and measure it 10 minutes later.